into the city, after having escaped from a Turkish prison, the German authorities are doubly eager to apprehend him to avoid another disgraceful failure. Issahis name is the Islamic form of Jesushowever, insinuates himself into the care of Leyla and Melik Oktay, who shelter him, in obedience to the commands of their religion, because he is ill and clearly has been tortured. Although he carries with him documents and a key that would entitle him to millions of dollars deposited at a private British bank in Hamburg, his avowed goal is to be allowed to stay in Germany and go to medical school. To this purpose, he seeks the help of Annabel Richter, a young lawyer working for Sanctuary North, a nonprofit agency dedicated to helping refugees and undocumented aliens gain residency in Germany. Annabel, in turn, gets in touch with Tommy Brue, the owner of the bank that holds Issa’s money in a secret, passworded account.

As in many other le Carré’s novels, a powerful motive for the main characters in A Most Wanted Man is the wish to escape from the clutches of a fraught relationship with a dominating father. Issa rejects his dead father, a former Soviet colonel who had worked for British intelligence in the waning years of the Soviet empire, and who had lavished his ill-gotten money on Issa to atone for his responsibility in the death of his Chechen mother. Annabel refutes her upper-class father and his elitist notions of the law to dedicate herself to the sort of clients for which her father would have felt contempt. In addition, she sees Issa as a chance to redeem herself for having failed a previous client whom she had to watch being taken away in shackles and deported to certain torture and death. Tommy Brue is trying to escape from yet another failed marriage and from the bank his father had turned into a money-laundering vehicle for British intelligence, in return for receiving an Order of the British Empire honor. In addition, he has fallen in love with Annabel. To a degree, this rejection of father figuresle Carré fictionalizes his own fraught relationship with his con man father in A Perfect Spy (1986)also stands for a rejection of the older generation’s confrontational Cold War mentality and its stereotyping of people and countries.

Apart from the enigmatic Issathe reader is never conclusively told whether he has, indeed, engaged in terrorist activities or has been only falsely accused of them by the Russiansthe most complex character of the novel is Günther Bachmann, the head of a German spy agency designed to recruit “human assets” in the fight against international terrorists. Bachmann genuinely wants to combat terrorism by going to the source: the big financiers. While he temporarily coerces and persuades minor villains or even innocent people into his service, he plans to let them go back to their normal lives after they have served their purpose. This gets him into conflict with his superiors in the Joint Steering Committee, the German equivalent of Homeland Security, whose main concern is revenge, body count, funding, and one-upmanship. Bachmann persuades Annabel to deliver Issa to him, in order to gain access to Dr. Faisal Abdullah, a Muslim scholar who runs charities to aid needy people in Islamic countries, but whom he also suspects of funneling money to terrorist organizations. Tommy has also been forced to assist British intelligence, which wants to cover up its past associations with his father in the laundering of funds paid to its spies, including Colonel Karpov, Issa’s father. Bachmann’s scheme, which would allow Issa to stay in Germany and go to medical school and release Dr. Abdullah after having discovered the destination for the 5 percent of his charitable funds that go to suspected terrorists, is approved by his superiors, in consultation with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

At the climactic moment of the novel, however, everything goes terribly wrong. Expecting them to be released shortly afterward, Tommy and Annabel accompany Issa and Dr. Abdullah to the bank, where Issa signs away his inheritance, around twelve million dollars, to Dr. Abdullah’s charities, which they immediately transfer into the appropriate accounts, including fifty thousand dollars into the account of a shipping company in Cyprus that the CIA suspects of supporting terrorism. When they leave the bank, Bachmann must watch with Tommy and Annabel as Issa and Dr. Abdullah are apprehended, handcuffed, and thrown into a delivery van. If there is any doubt about their destination, it is dispelled by Newton, the CIA operative on the scene who explains to him that they are headed for “extraordinary rendition,” in other words, they will be taken to another countrythe agent refers to “some hole in the desert”and tortured until they admit that they are terrorists. Newton calls this process with no lawyers around to pervert it “American” justice. Bachmann realizes impotently that he has been used in the destruction of the innocent Issa and the misguided Dr. Abdullah. Even Leyla and Melik, the good Samaritans, will suffer: Although they are legal residents, German immigration will not let them return from a family wedding in Turkey, because they have harbored a “known” terrorist.

Though A Most Wanted Man certainly makes for suspenseful reading and does not lack gripping plot development, it is above all a morality play, not a spy thriller. Its focus is not a battle between “us” and “them,” but on the conflict in and between “us.” It is an attempt to answer the questionmuch debated in the media and in academewhether a noble goal, such as the defeat of international terrorism, justifies even the most abhorrent means, or whether in pursuit of this goal the moral high ground is lost. Le Carré poses this question sensitively and with great skill. The majority of his characters are complex, fallible humans whose instinct it is to come to the aid of their fellow humans, although they are not always clear about their own motives for doing so. Even though their own situation is precarious, Leyla and Melik take in Issa because he is confused and battered and because their religion commands them to do so. They choose to believe his story, although it is unlikely and contradictory. Annabel compromises her own safety and her career because, against her father’s advice, she is willing to follow her feelings and instincts without always controlling them. Tommy wants to save himself from a disastrous marriage and from becoming an unprincipled social climber like his father. In this way, Issa has indeed become their redeemer, despite being crucified himself. The only less-than-human characters in the novel are the spy masters, especially the members of the CIA who are asked to play the role of the traditional villain, though maybe a little too stereotypically. Historical events may eventually relegate A Most Wanted Man to the back shelves, yet it is a sensitive and engaging dramatization of one of the great moral dilemmas of the early twenty-first century.